No Good Deed

FIVE

Alone again for dinner, but Cam didn't mind. To be honest, she wasn't looking forward to pretending not to care about her father's visit across town. She balanced herself on a stool at the breakfast island and planted her elbows on the marble countertop her mom had practically pitched a fit to renovate. She hadn't stuck around to enjoy them, but they had been her father's attempt at reconciliation.

From this vantage point, she had a clear view of the oven timer, working its way down from twenty-five minutes. Her stomach growled impatiently at the thought of the crispy pizza bites that awaited her, their cheesy innards melting by the moment.

She decided to distract herself through immersion in her phone. A seed of curiosity had been planted in her psyche by Deanna during their afternoon meeting - a seed that had grown in the hours since. At first, it had started as an ambiguous, nagging uncertainty that she couldn't quite name. Once she was on the highway in her weathered Subaru, though, she realized the daughter's name had struck a nerve: Janna Vines. It had a familiar ring to it, and there was something about the way Deanna said it, as if hesitating. And then there was Deanna's insistence, the faint air of desperation that clung to her final invitation to meet again.

Cam could kick herself for not thinking to check the apps on Janna's phone before handing it over. In this rare case, her sense of altruism had overcome her nosiness. Now, though, she found her fingers typing the name into the search bar of her own MyFace app. As soon as she clicked Search, her pupils swelled.

Condolences flooded Janna's page: RIP Janna. Miss you so much every day, Sweet Girl. I didn't know you that well, but we always had good times in chem & algebra.

Cam found herself staring in disbelief. Janna must have been around her own age - two years younger at max. What could possibly have happened? An accident? A rare medical condition?

She clicked over to her bookmarked search engine and typed in Janna's name. The first result confirmed the worst case scenario: Local track star found dead in apparent suicide, investigators say.

Cam's eyes worked faster than her fingers, and she scrolled down the screen, suddenly and intuitively ashamed of the morbid curiosity that had taken over her brain. According to the article, Janna went for a jog twice daily in the summer as part of her conditioning routine, once in the morning and once in the evening. When she didn't show up for dinner one night two weeks ago, her stepbrother went out looking for her. He found her lying along a heavily wooded trail at...

...Lake Harbinger Park, a single gunshot wound to the head.

A chill rippled up Cam's spine. She had tripped along the same path that this girl had followed to her death. She may have fallen in the exact spot where the dead girl was found. Where Janna was found, Cam corrected herself. The girl had a name.

"Deanna," Cam breathed out loud. That poor woman; she must have been in denial, still referring to Janna in the present tense, eagerly attempting to arrange a second coffee date. As strange as it seemed, Cam had learned from Professor Boggs that everyone processed grief in a different way, at their own pace. They had even discussed the topic of transference in class.

She kept reading. Although there were no signs of foul play, detectives weren't ruling it out. For the time being, though, the case was being treated as a self-inflicted injury.

Cam's mind flashed back to the trove of saddened messages that now dominated Janna's MyFace page. She seemed to have no shortage of friends. Sure, they could have been fair-weather friends - Janna being the star of the track team and all - and sure depression could have factored in. If anyone understood that fact, Cam did. As an introvert, she knew the pressure to perform, pitted against the anxiety and self-doubt that tempered each success. But still, she wondered...

She reflected on her time with Mrs. Vines, combing through fragments of conversation.

"She's uh, she's about your age."

The Good Samaritan struck again. Cam decided to reach out.